How is your research into institutions responsible for the production and regulation of the media influence your production work?

At first the institutions we looked at were major record company labels such as Universal and Island Records (the record company Florence + The Machine are with) However we realised that these labels weren’t very specific to our genre and were very big companies that had a variety of artists under their name. After choosing a specific genre and target audience we had to find a record company that portrayed similar artists to our band ‘The Rivals’. We researched further into independent record labels, as this would be the best starting point for us to promote our single to and independent label before branching off afterwards to the bigger labels such as Universal Records. We found lots of specific record labels in America, such as ‘Bloodshot Records’ who based in Chicago have been able to keep their independence they are interested in fresh new Indie alternative rock bands that don’t conform to the original stereotypes and I thought this was a good match for us, however we carried on looking for British based record labels as we are an English group with a predominantly British target audience. Looking at ‘XL’ record label an independent based in the United Kingdom, although started off with artists like the ‘Prodigy’ they have branched out to take the best artists in their genres including ‘White Stripes’. This influenced our decisions to try something different in relation to the themes behind our video.

The Canadian-American band ‘Arcade Fire’ have also kept to their routes of not conforming to the major record labels but kept with the independent record label ‘Merge Records’ since they first began. The band often records its albums in its own studios, to exacting and personal specifications, and retains ownership of the music, which it licenses to Merge. Its previous two albums have gone gold, or close to it, and “The Suburbs” is expected to do the same, or better. This is the same type of exposure that we want our band ‘The Rivals’ to do and as ‘Arcade Fire’ sit in the same genre of and uses a record label focusing on the manufacturing of the product similar to the independent ‘Matador Records’ although these are American based record labels, this would mean we could branch out into the American market thus expanding our marketing techniques and receiving a bigger profit and larger amount of single sales.